The building of the New State saw the formation of a new political élite, more professional and middle‐class in character than the one that had been in existence before 1931.

Although not many members of the traditional business élites could be found among the régime’s top officials, plenty of them held positions on local government and trade union bodies. From here, they were able to defend their interests and enjoy access to local councils and the boards of financial firms. During these years, many politicians and army officials became members of the business élite.

[…]

Franco was quick to realise the shift in the international landscape in mid‐1947. He increased police repression of the opposition, decimating the clandestine structure of the CNT, and openly used the military to fight against the guerrillas, weakening them enormously. He surmised that, given the threat of communism, the [liberal régimes] would look the other way and he was right.

In the wake of the Soviet blockade of Berlin (from June 1948 to May 1949) and the birth of NATO (April 1949), amid an all‐out war in Korea (from June 1950 to July 1953), the UN rescinded its condemnation of the Franco régime and recommended the return of ambassadors (December 1950). In the spring of 1951, the US, British and French ambassadors all came back to Madrid and Spain was admitted into UNESCO in 1952. Subsequently, the régime signed the Concordat of 1953 with the Vatican (in August of that year) and a bilateral agreement with the USA (September 1953), and Spain was finally admitted into the UN (December 1955).

For the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), the diplomatic strategy necessitated armed action at home: a guerrilla strategy. The guerrilla war was a complex situation. The guerrilla army consisted of left‐wing activists who had sought refuge in the mountains to escape from repression, peasants persecuted because of their involvement in wartime collectivisations and the members of those parties and trade unions in support of organised armed struggle against the régime.

Bands of guerrillas cropped up in various mountainous areas of Spain at the end of the civil war. They reached their zenith and achieved a certain level of organisation from the latter stages of the Second World War through the end of the 1940s.

It is calculated that between 1946 and 1951, some 15,000 guerrilla fighters met their deaths in Spain. The PCE was the organisation that gave them the greatest support in this period, as a mechanism to mobilise the population against the régime and draw the Allies into a war to end Francoism.

(Emphasis added.)

By comparison, liberal capitalists in the same era were (quietly) supporting Axis‐affiliated guerrillas in Eurasia in the hopes of overthrowing, or at least weakening, the U.S.S.R. and the other people’s republics. See Christopher Simpson’s Blowback, chapters eleven and twelve, for proof.

ETA: modified the title to be clearer.